MZUZU-(MaraviPost)—National Food Reserve Agency (NFRA) has revealed that for some years, its food reservoirs in Mzuzu and Luchenza have been in damaged state, a development that has affected food storage at the two silos.
Speaking on Thursday in Mzuzu during a tour at the silos, NFRA Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Nasinuku Saukira, said since the silos were commissioned in 2010 and 2011, they have had problems of discharging orgar and this has brought about logistical costs.
Saukira further said there is need to overhaul the situation and determine how much money may be needed to fix the silos.
“The challenge that we have here is similar to that which we have in Luchenza. It’s regarding what we call a discharge orgar; this is a section where when you are releasing maize; you are drawing maize from the silo, there is a very small section, maybe two metres where the maize has got to move from the silo to be discharged into another type of transport system; more or less soon after inception. In 2012 when the maize was moved, the last bit was in 2013, we haven’t come back to restock. The same with Luchenza, in 2010 and 2011, we haven’t restocked,” lamented Saukira.
In his remarks, Minister of Agriculture, Robin Lowe, said government will have to fix the silos before the next harvesting season.
Lowe said: “We are working against season considering that very soon, we will have some rains so the agreement is that these silos should be maintained within the season to make sure that by harvesting time, everything is OK.”
It is currently estimated that Malawi has about 60 thousand metric tonnes of maize in its silos.
